Just win already

Cubs or Red Sox World Series victory would mean fewer self-pitying fans

I have this feeling that the Chicago Cubs or Boston Red Sox are going to win the World Series this year. Actually, that's not quite accurate. I have this fervent, desperate, oh-please-if-there's-a-merciful-God-in-heaven-let-it-happen desire for the Chicago Cubs or Boston Red Sox to win the World Series this year.

Unless you are a diehard fan of one of the six other teams in this year's playoffs, you should join me in wishing the best for the Cubs and Red Sox, neither of whom have won a World Series since man began walking erect. At least, that's the way it seems after decades of listening to fans of the two clubs wallow in their exquisite misery, wondering why the Cubs and Sox are so terribly cursed. The Cubs have not won the Series since 1908 and have not even reached it since 1945. The Red Sox haven't been world champions since 1918, and both teams have subjected their fans to heartbreaking near-misses during those droughts. How frustrating is it to be a Cubs or Red Sox supporter? Don't get them started.

But the reason we should become a nation of Red Sox and/or Cubs fans for the next month isn't that we think their long-time supporters have suffered enough. It's because the rest of us have. A World Series win by one of them would mean we'd have one fewer group of self-pitying fans to listen to. No more fatalistic Chicago fans wondering out loud about what cruel way the Cubs will find to dash their hopes this time. No more psychically wounded Red Sox lovers blathering on about the Curse of the Bambino, Bucky F---in' Dent and the ball Buckner butchered.

It all gets a little tiresome for the rest of us. Maybe that's because there's always a subtext to the agonizing of Cubs and Sox fans that suggests they're somehow special, that because they've gone so long without experiencing a championship win, they have a deeper, more passionate connection to their teams. This isn't true, of course. It's just as tough to be a fan of, say, the Atlanta Hawks, who have never won a championship, but Hawks fans haven't turned their wait into theater. Famed writers such as John Updike wax philosophical on the nature of the Red Sox fan's struggle, but no one pens brilliant essays about rooting for the Seattle Mariners.

The Red Sox and Cubs have a legion of fans, some of them famous, who have chronicled their experience in great literary detail. What would political columnist George Will, who once wrote that "Cubs fans are 90 percent scar tissue" use for material if his beloved Cubs actually win it all? Will historian Doris Kearns Goodwin ever be called on again by documentarians to expound on the thick skin of the Sox fan if there's no longer anything to be thick-skinned about?

This isn't to say that the citizens of the Cubs and Red Sox nations are bad people. Some of my best friends, as they say, are passionate fans of one team or the other. But I've always suspected that Boston and Chicago rooters enjoy their long losing streaks on some level. The moment one of their teams wins the Series, they become just another group of fans going through the same mundane ups and downs the rest of us do. No more myth, no more drama.

So, let us become one with the residents of Chicago's North Side who love the Cubs and the hardy New Englanders who adore their Sox. They deserve to win for a change. As for the rest of us, we could use the peace and quiet.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor writes about a Hot Button topic every Monday on SI.com.